York College women win CAC title, earn NCAA berth

York College seniors Brittany Hicks, Kristen Hailey, Aja Wallpher and Kelsey Murphy won their second Capital Athletic Conference women's basketball tournament championship Saturday afternoon with a 66-53 win against Christopher Newport at Wolf Gymnasium in the Grumbacher Sport and Fitness Center.

"They won it for the seniors when they were freshmen," said York College coach Betsy Witman. "We told them before the game that now they are seniors, we are winning this championship for you. This was all about doing it for the seniors.

"It could not have had a better ending."

The first time the foursome won was in 2011, when all were freshmen starters on a team that advanced to the third round of the NCAA Division III tournament.

"As a senior, I couldn't ask for anything more," said Hicks, a York Catholic graduate who finished with a game-high 23 points and a team-high nine rebounds. "Hopefully, this will give us a push as we head into the NCAA's."

Monday, they will find out if they get one more home game in the opening round of this year's tournament. York College is 15-0 at home this season. The Spartans, ranked 12th in the latest d3hoops.com poll, earned the league's automatic berth into the tourney with Saturday's win.

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It was no easy task against Christopher Newport, who was ranked No. 20 in the latest poll. Junior forward Camry Green came into the game averaging 21 points and 10 rebounds in her past three games.

York College (25-2) attempted to offset that with the inside duo of the 6-foot Hicks and 5-10 Hailey, but Hailey spent a lot of the game in foul trouble and played 22 minutes. She still wound up with 11 points and eight rebounds.

"It's frustrating," Hailey said. "It is hard to get back into the rhythm of the game and also to stay loose. It makes it hard to play the way I need to play. I don't like letting people score (because I am in foul trouble), but I can't foul out."

In the early going, it was redshirt junior Jess Selby who helped step into the void left by Hailey. The 5-11 guard/forward came into the game averaging 7.3 points per game, but she had reached her season average with five minutes left in the opening half. Selby finished with 13 points, including two 3-pointers, and five rebounds.

"You treat it like every big game," said Selby, who came in with this year's senior class but lost last season to a knee injury. "You try to not make it too big of a deal, but the atmosphere was great and that really helped me. Hearing the crowd go wild under the basket when you hit a shot, that helps. I got good luck texts before the game. The support all day was great.

"I'm close to the senior class for sure. I came in with those four. The first thing I did when the buzzer went off was to go find Kelsey Murphy. We were just proud to do it for the seniors."

Junior Shea Wassel and freshman Sam Hruz also filled Hailey's void off the bench on the defensive side of the ball. The 6-1 Wassel and the 6-1 Cruz battled Green inside. Wassel finished with four points and five rebounds in 14 minutes of play, while the 6-1 Hruz scored two points and grabbed three boards in 12 minutes.

"It was a tremendous team effort," Witman said. "We have so many weapons. Everybody just did their jobs in this game."

Green finished with a team-high 16 points and 13 of Christopher Newport's 39 rebounds in the game.

"She is big and very strong in the post," Hailey said. "It made us play a different game than we are used to. We usually play a lot of guard-oriented teams. They were definitely looking in to her. She was their go-to player. We tried to limit her to a single shot and keep her off the boards as best we could."

Christopher Newport (22-5) had the lead only twice in the game, the opening basket and at 18:15 left when a Green layup put the Captains ahead 26-25.

Wallpher nailed a jumper to hand the lead back to York for good 14 seconds later.

The Spartans continued adding to the lead and iced the game with 4:06 remaining on a 3-pointer by Murphy that gave York a 56-43 cushion.